I laughed when I read this headline, “Canadians ‘ready to go to war’ with U.S. over tariff fight”. But that’s just an attention grabber. How long do you think Canada would last in a real shooting war with our southern neighbour, 2 or 3 days maybe at most? We have a well-trained and efficient military that can punch above its weight, but not THAT far above its weight. The Canadian Armed Forces are presently ranked 74th in size in the world with around 120,000 personnel including reservists in the Army, Navy and Air Force combined. The U.S. Armed Forces have over 1.3 million active personnel plus 865,000 reservists. I’m not sure which branch of their military would be used to invade Canada but they know our people are tough so it would probably be the Marines. The U.S. Marine Corps has over 180,000 active personnel plus close to 40,000 reservists. Marines are also the component of the U.S. Armed Forces that are trained in expeditionary and amphibious warfare so they can attack from land and sea. Of course “ready to go to war” really means the majority of Canadians are ready to boycott the U.S. according to a new poll done by Nanos Research for CTV News. Almost ¾’s of respondents said they are likely to cut back on travel to the States and boycott goods made south of the border. 68% said they’re likely to avoid U.S. retailers in Canada. I don’t think any of us harbours any ill will towards ordinary Americans any more than they feel about us. It’s the bully man-child in the White House that is causing this rift that will harm both countries.

That’s Coffeetalk. I’m Vic Dubois.